Tuesday 20 April at 20.00Talk by Samantha EllisAnne Brontë has always been overshadowed by her two elder sisters. To celebrate her bicentenary we have invited Samantha Ellis, the writer who had done so much to bring Anne into the limelight and highlight her strengths both as a person and writer.Samantha Ellis’ Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life (2017) takes a personal, poignant and surprising journey into the life and work of ‘the other Brontë sister’, viewing her as a brave, strongly feminist writer well ahead of her time – and her more celebrated siblings – with much to teach us today about how to find our way in the world.Samantha, a British writer, playwright and journalist, is also the author of How to be a Heroine (2014).
The Brontë sisters, Anne, Emily and Charlotte, are busy with their own literary pursuits, both poetry and the idea of writing a novel. But since that doesn’t keep them busy enough, they’ve started their own little detective agency.When their housekeeper shares the news that a set of old bones has been found bricked up inside Scar Top House, nothing will do but that the sisters look into it at the request of Liston Bradshaw. They aren’t afraid of the rumors that Liston’s father, Clifton Bradshaw, owner of the house, has sold his should to the devil (although he is a hard man).It seems pretty cut-and-dry since the skeleton was found in Bradshaw’s house, but the young women are nothing if not thorough in their quest.Ellis does a great job of giving the historical facts about the Brontë family good play, alternating chapters among the sisters. (Faye Dasen)
Cumbria has some of the most historic homes in the country - here are just some of the incredible properties for sale including homes with links to William Wordsworth and Emily Brontë. (...)Fountain House, Kirkby Lonsdale£885,000 (Guide price)Rev William Carus Wilson, a prominent figure in the area, added the Georgian front section in 1830.The reverend founded Clergy Daughter’s School at nearby Cowan Bridge, where the novelist Charlotte Brontë was a pupil.The school and the Rev Wilson were said to have provided Charlotte with inspiration for the Lowood school and tyrannical headmaster in her 1847 masterpiece Jane Eyre. (Catherine Mackinley)
So what exactly did she mean by “producing” me? She did so by passing on her belief as to what an engagement with books really meant. Stay amateur; don’t professionalise yourself. What matters is your love of great literature, not processing it. If that means not publishing (like her), so be it. Work out a small shelf’s length of authors who really mean something to you. Most of what I have published, over the last half century, is on authors borrowed from Monica’s shelf: Thomas Hardy, pre-eminently, Thackeray, Scott, Trollope, Emily (not Charlotte) Brontë. Jane Austen she thought prissy. I part company with her there.
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a wonderful cameo on the traditional Christmas spirit. Similarly, Sense and Sensibility by Austen profiles the Victorian custom of older men marrying young girls. Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights is all about how social class creates conflicts among its characters. (Sutapa Basu)
Un mare, anzi un oceano, di carte – biografie, saggi critici, nuove edizioni, traduzioni, film – circonda il magico arcipelago brontiano: Anne, Emily, Charlotte. Lontane dalla modernità e perciò così attraenti. I loro versi allucinati, tardo-romantici forse pre-imagisti, misteriosi e incantatòri hanno il fascino dei lieder. Non ci chiedono di essere capiti, ma di sentire con loro. Per merito del padre, il reverendo Patrick Brontë della canonica di Haworth, bello, dominante, solitario, conosciamo le adolescenziali aspirazioni delle loro brevi esistenze. Morirono di tubercolosi – come già la madre e le due sorelline più giovani – a circa trent’anni Anne e Emily, Charlotte a trentotto. (Read more) (Viola Papetti) (Translation)
Los ecos que acompañaron a Pilar Quintana durante la escritura fueron los de Rebeca, de Daphne Du Maurier, de 1938, que luego se haría popular por la adaptación cinematográfica de Alfred Hitchcock, en 1940. Junto a ella, muy cerca, Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë. “Son dos novelas que me impresionaron en mi adolescencia. Ese gótico de amores infelices con niebla”, confiesa Quintana. (Winston Manrique Sabogal)
Format 4/3, photographie épurée, gros plans et cadres frontaux, la cinéaste impose immédiatement une mise en scène sèche et précise, rappelant la Andrea Arnold des Hauts de Hurlevent dans son traitement moderne apposé à un film d’époque. Jennifer Kent, marque ainsi une évolution assez radicale après Mister Babadook, autant qu’elle s’affirme par la même occasion. (Vincent Nicolet and Jean-François Dickeli) (Translation)
Extra (Ireland) describes the younger Ian Bailey as a 'handsome Heathcliff-like poet'. On ReReading Jane Eyre Luccia Gray continues her Jane Eyre in Flash Fiction posts.
Determining Wuthering Heights
Ideology, Intertexts, Tradition
María Valero Redondo
Peter Lang Publishers
ISBN: 978-1-4331-7747-7
Recent criticism on Emily Brontë and her novel has tried to correct the deep-rooted belief that Emily Brontë was a literary "genius" isolated in the moors of Haworth. Indeed, an overview of recent Brontë scholarship indicates that two important critical shifts have lately cropped up: an increasing sociological attention to cultural studies on the one hand and an emphasis on interdisciplinarity. The present book is an unprecedented and groundbreaking study on Wuthering Heights. It detaches itself from the current productive vogue for sociological approaches to narrative texts which has contributed to obscure the focus on anomalous intertextual relations, and prioritizes the literary context over any other biographical, historical, or cultural context. Determining Wuthering Heights postulates a determinate intertextual meaning of Emily Brontë’s novel, enriching its heterogeneity by examining its dialogic relation with previous, contemporary and subsequent texts in order to confirm that Emily Brontë’s novel is not sui generis.
The target audience of the book would be members of the academic community interested in Victorian literature in general (researchers, scholars…) and in Wuthering Heights in particular. However, since Wuthering Heights has become a classic novel which is today read and discussed in universities around the world, the subject may also appeal to students who have to take a course on Victorian Literature and/or on the Brontës.
Forgive me for screaming, but In the Quick is Jane Eyre IN SPACE! The idea sounds unhinged, but its execution is so fresh and so understanding of Brontë and genre fiction that it all comes together in a wild Ad Astra meets Prep mash-up. In a not-so-distant America, orphaned young June Reed is sent to study at the space program her brilliant uncle founded after his early death. At the same time, a crew he sent deep into the solar system suddenly goes quiet. As June endures a punishing regimen of robotic sciences, physical fitness, and team-building exercises, she quietly works on the problem of where the crew might be and how best to save them. An entirely fun adventure. (Hillary Kelly)
With echoes of Station Eleven, The Martian, and, yes, Jane Eyre, this is a gripping and unconventional novel with an unforgettable heroine. (Lauren LeBlanc)
Like “Wuthering Heights,” “The Whispering House” is a melancholy novel, its characters filled with dark longings. Cory and Freya are in thrall to the past: Cory to his mother and what Byrne Hall used to be when it was “still crammed with treasures,” and Freya to a time when her sister still lived. (Danielle Trussoni)
I’m having a fantasy dinner party, I’ll invite these authors . . .Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë (who might have met), Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield (who were friends), and Edith Nesbit and Noel Streatfield, who would have had a lot in common.
S M Mahfuzur RahmanLecturer, Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh,DhakaCrossings Volume 11 2020For millennia, women have been demonized and denigrated through the metanarrative of Eve’s collaboration with Satan in Paradise as proof of women’s inherent moral inferiority as the progenitors of the “Original Sin.” Grandstanding poets such as Milton with their grandiose epics such as Paradise Lost have perpetuated and propelled the myth of the “second sex.” Thus, one half of humanity has beencondemned and confined to their “place” indoors and reduced to the service of the “superior sex” – until the revolutionary age of the Romantics attacked all grand narratives. The two Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Emily, for instance, tried to upend the narrative of subjugation by championing the egalitarian struggle of Eve and Lucifer over the hierarchical order of Adam and God. The subversivestrategy of delegitimizing the metanarrative of the Original Sin frequents in Shirleyand haunts the gothic landscapes of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, where thefemale central characters, Jane and Cathy respectively, undercut and underminetheir feminine performativity by bending the will of their male counterparts.Deconstructing the abovementioned novels, this paper aims to demonstrate howthe Brontë sisters actually attempted to unravel the metanarrative of the Fall fromwithin – to hail Eve as the genuine “hero” – and prove how the feminine intellectis at par, if not superior, to that of the masculine.
“The Brontë’s were my favourites. Me and some of my sisters are writers so we would constantly argue which Brontë we were. Of course, I was Charlotte and my more hysterical sister could be Emily, because she wrote Wuthering Heights. Then my sister Caz would stoically say, ‘Well, I suppose I’m Anne, then’.“Jane Eyre was the one for me because all the books I usually read were about working class girls who need to make their way in the world who aren’t pretty, which is really important, and who are just a bit odd but still just through hard work and cheerfulness and resourcefulness manage to triumph.“Anne Of Green Gables, Little Women and Jane Eyre were the books that made me think, ‘Maybe I will be OK’ because these girls seem to have found a way through. (Hannah Stephenson)
What book …would you take to a desert island?I love Maria McCann’s As Meat Loves Salt, I’ve read it seven or eight times. It’s an immersive, historical love story set at the time of the English Civil War. Jacob Cullen is a disgraced soldier, a violent, possessive man who falls in love with a fellow soldier, Christopher Ferris.At first everything is great between them, but as England keeps changing their relationship is soon tested. When it becomes clear that Jacob cannot be with his lover, his obsession becomes deadly. This is a real heartbreaker of a book. It’s a historical gay romance, and sort of like my version of Wuthering Heights.
Un amor maduro, el particular modo de vida de las clases acomodadas porteñas a comienzos del siglo XX y los secretos más oscuros de una familia son los ejes de La institutriz, la novela más reciente de Gabriela Margall que suma elementos del gótico a su tradicional narrativa romántica y que con reminiscencias de Jane Eyre -el célebre libro de Carlota Brontë- cuenta la historia de Elizabeth Shaw, una mujer inglesa que llegó al Río de la Plata a trabajar como institutriz. [...]-¿Cómo surgió el cruce del género tradicional con el gótico, el claro homenaje a “Jane Eyre”?- Si escribía sobre “la institutriz” como tema, no se me ocurría trabajar sin Jane Eyre de Charlotte Brontë, o esa otra institutriz menos conocida que es Agnes Grey de Anne Brontë. Al principio quería poner imágenes, referencias a Jane Eyre: un protagonista frustrado, un perro, una niña llamada Adèle (la niña de “La Institutriz” se llama Adela). Cuando incorporé el último ingrediente, la locura y el secreto, la novela tomó un aire gótico imposible de negar. Si al principio fue inconsciente, después fue deliberado y muy divertido mezclar el género romántico y el gótico. (Analia Páez) (Translation)
Esse é um dos motivos por que o romance da autora –o sexto de sua carreira– empolgou crítica e público no ano passado. A tradição da literatura gótica é encabeçada por nomes surgidos no século 19, como Emily Brontë, autora de "O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes", e Charlotte Brontë, de "Jane Eyre", na vertente romântica, e Bram Stoker, de "Drácula", e Mary Shelley, de "Frankenstein", na vertente do terror. (Translation)
3. Old Hall, Howarh [sic]As you can see by this picture, there are plenty of outdoor tables and plenty of members of staff to serve you drinks. With beautiful views across West Yorkshire and in the heart of Brontë Country, it's a great place for drink on a nice day. (Jonathan Pritchard)
55. Locations for the shooting of feature films include Chatsworth House (Pride and Prejudice), Haddon Hall (Jane Eyre) and North Lees Hall (The Other Boleyn Girl).56. Legendary authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and William Wordsworth have been inspired by the park’s treasures. (Gay Bolton)
Let's read all of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë's main novels in 2021!See below for the announcement video and schedule.Hosted by Marissa from Blatantly Bookish: https://youtu.be/Cv9nWH9e5NYSchedule:January - Villette by Charlotte BrontëFebruary - Villette (continued)March- The Professor by Charlotte BrontëApril - Agnes Grey by Anne BrontëMay - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne BrontëJune - Shirley by Charlotte BrontëJuly - Shirley (continued)August - Poetry? A Modern Brontë-related book? (TBD)September - Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëOctober - Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëNovember - Nonfiction November Brontë styleDecember - Catch up month,, Modern Brontë-related book (TBD/more details to follow)
Plans to transform a house with Brontë links into luxury holiday accommodation have received the seal of approval.Proposals for a major refurbishment of the Grade II* listed former Red House museum, at Gomersal, won all-party support at a meeting of Kirklees Council’s cabinet.Dating back to 1660, the property and grounds are considered an important heritage asset.They are associated with Luddite activities and the Taylor family – particularly Mary Taylor, a writer and early feminist.And the house is revered by Brontë fans. Charlotte – a friend of Mary – was a regular guest at the property in the 1830s and gave it a starring role as Briarmains in her novel, Shirley.Kirklees Council plans to invest £600,000 in the site to bring the historic house – and a neighbouring cart shed – back into use.Red House operated as a community museum, but falling visitor numbers and rising costs led to its closure in 2016.A decision to allow the property to be marketed for private sale prompted a petition from Red House Heritage Group in 2019, which resulted in the council’s cabinet agreeing to explore alternative uses for the site which could maintain it in public hands.Under the new plan, designed to appeal to the luxury tourism market, the house will accommodate ten guests. And once the business is established, it may also host weddings. The cart shed will be split into four self-catering apartments.Revenue generated from holiday stays is expected to be sufficient to cover the cost of operating the scheme and to enable a series of open days/weekends to take place, ensuring community access to the site.Senior councillor Graham Turner told cabinet colleagues: “It’s important we recognise this project has been a challenge due to its complexity and its historical links with the Brontes, but I am sure it will be a great success and will pave the way forward on how we deal with similar buildings in the future. I suspect other councils will be keeping a keen eye on this, as it’s groundbreaking for a local authority to develop this type of project.”Colin Parr, strategic director for environment and climate change, said the scheme would allow the council to retain the property in public ownership without incurring huge operating costs. (Alistair Shand)
4. Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëDuring her short lifetime, she published only this one novel. The violent tale was received with dismay. But its reputation grew. And grew. Into a classic. It was published 174 years ago, and still feels relevant and contemporary. The foundling Heathcliff could never cope with the fact that his twin flame Catherine married a childhood friend. A wonderful novel depicting passion and revenge spanning generations. (Jonas Jonasson)
Amateur theatricals have a history, too. Nineteenth-century novels like “Mansfield Park” or “Jane Eyre” detail private friends-and-family performances. (Alexis Soloski)
27. Hathersage is said to feature in the novels of Charlotte Brontë.
Great to host the cast and crew of @SHUScreen @screenyorkshire #keepingupwiththeBrontes today. Looking forward to seeing the edit! #Haworth pic.twitter.com/F58jbJdvpG
— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 14, 2021
Juliet GardinerPavilion BooksISBN: 9781849946605April 15, 2021
The Illustrated Letters of the Brontës is the story both of the real world of the Brontës at Haworth Parsonage, their home on the edge of the lonely Yorkshire moors, and of the imaginary worlds they spun for themselves in their novels and poetry. Wherever possible, their story is told using their own words – the letters they wrote to each other, Emily and Anne’s secret diaries, and Charlotte’s exchanges with luminaries of literary England – or those closest to them, such as their brother Branwell, their father Patrick Brontë, and their novelist friend Mrs Gaskell.
The Brontës sketched and painted their worlds too, in delicate ink washes and watercolours of family and friends, animals and the English moors. These pictures illuminate the text as do the tiny drawings the Brontë children made to illustrate their imaginary worlds. In addition, there are facsimiles of their letters and diaries, paintings by artists of the day, and pictures of household life.
It is a unique and privileged view of the real lives of three women, writers and sisters.
Council chiefs in Kirklees say investing in a listed historical building with connections to the Brontës will ensure it has a long-term future whilst remaining in public ownership.There was cross-party support for a plan to turn Gomersal’s Red House, formerly a museum, into a short-term holiday destination and intimate wedding venue.In proposing the £600,000 project to Kirklees Council ’s Cabinet on Tuesday, senior councillor Graham Turner described it as “something of a departure on how we would normally deal with assets that we can no longer afford to keep, and which we have no strategic need for.”The Grade II* listed 19th century manor house will be comprehensively refurbished and sympathetically remodelled to become a five-star high-end luxury holiday home for commercial holiday letting, accommodating 10 people within five bedrooms to be let as a single holiday cottage unit. [...]The handover could be as soon as March 2022 with the house open for holidays in April.The project has received cross-party support. Clr David Hall, a Gomersal member and also leader of the Conservative group on the council, said turning it over to part commercial use represented “an imaginative solution”.He and his colleagues Lisa Holmes and Michelle Grainger-Mead previously referred to Red House as “the heritage jewel in Gomersal’s crown”.Clr Turner added: “It’s important that we recognise that this project has been a challenge due to its complexity and its historical links with the Brontës, but I am sure that this will be a great success and will pave the way forward on how we deal with similar buildings in the future.“I suspect that other local authorities will be keeping a keen eye on this, as it’s truly groundbreaking for a local authority to develop this type of project.”The site will not be completely devoted to commercial hires. Community access to the house and gardens will be offered over a series of managed and curated events and open days thus allowing the public to enjoy the house and grounds.With its connections to Charlotte Brontë , who stayed at Red House and renamed it ‘Briarmains’ in her 1849 novel Shirley, the site is expected to have broad appeal. (Tony Earnshaw)
The play imagines iconic heroines of 19th century literature rebelling from their scripted destiny, in defiance of their suitors. [...]Jo (from Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”), Lizzie (from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”), Cathy (from Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”) and Jane (Charlotte Brontë’s titular “Jane Eyre”) have all been hailed for their creators’ respective depictions of independent women who resist the expectations placed on them by the mores of their era. Here, the playwright has extended the concept one giant leap farther, with the foursome meeting on the desolate moors where the Brontë sisters’ novels transpire, and establishing a militant, feminist collective far from the madding pleas and demands of their would-be lovers, Mr. Darcy, Mr. Rochester, Heathcliff and Theodore “Laurie” Laurence.While the women bonded over s’mores around a cozy campfire, the men were quickly revealed to be petty bullies and insecure cry-babies. That in itself might make for an amusing and intriguing storyline, but plotting among some of the source material’s supporting characters led to all-out warfare, and a somber conclusion that called for reconciliation, and suggested that some destinies cannot be avoided.The strength of USC’s undergraduate acting program was on full display here, with Susan Swavely as a spunky Jo, Sydni Brown frenzied as destitute Jane, Emma James elegant as Lizzie, and Zoe Chan appropriately volatile as Cathy, until unavoidable plot developments rendered her serene and omniscient. Recent graduate John Romanski convincingly played decades older than his actual age as the tortured Rochester, and Cameron Eubanks nearly stole every scene he was in as the spoiled, temperamental Laurie. [...]And while one doesn’t need to have read all of the source novels to understand the cultural and symbolic significance of the unattainable Mr. Darcy or the bad-boy Heathcliff, I fear many jokes, inside references and important plot devices were simply lost on anyone who didn’t remember who the Binghams, St. John Rivers or Marmee might be, and how they influence the lives of the main characters. (August Krickell)
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte BrontëJane Eyre is celebrated on many grounds: its insightful portrayal of childhood, its passionate proto-feminism, the heart-stopping romance of its central love story, to name but a few. I love it for all these reasons, but I also love it because it is Properly Creepy. I still get goosebumps when I imagine Jane waking at night to the sound of malevolent laughter outside her bedroom door. As with any self-respecting horror story, the reality of Jane’s situation is murky: is Thornfield Hall haunted by a ghost, or a would-be murderer, or is the mystery a trick of Jane’s mind, a symptom of her own dark desires? The scene that stays with me most vividly takes place shortly before Jane’s wedding, when she wakes at night to find an unknown woman standing in front of the mirror, wearing her bridal veil... It’s a gothic masterclass. (Elizabeth Brooks)
[The book that]...I brought on a momentous trip:This was probably the very best night of my life so far: the night I got to sleep over at the Brontë parsonage in Haworth !!!! (I still can’t quite believe it actually happened.) I was too keyed up to sleep properly. I was in a room situated between Emily and Charlotte’s bedrooms, lying in a four poster bed frame that had belonged to their father, and it just felt like my heart had grabbed my brain by the elbow and was just galloping around and around with it. Luckily I had [Jorge Luis] Borges’ Collected Fictions (translated by Andrew Hurley) on my e-reader, and they kept me company until my eyes closed…and probably afterwards, too. (Riza Cruz)
But while the existing understanding of romance novels held by those unfamiliar with the genre tends to be limited to old world prose penned by the likes of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, or pulp novels filled with high levels of lust and not much else, the romance books of today find a happy medium between the two aforementioned extremes. (Ana Eksoucian-Cavadas)
6 Walk to spectacular views and charming villages of the Yorkshire Dalessummer holidaysA summer holiday in Yorkshire offers the perfect opportunity to get back to nature, stretch your legs after months of being cooped up at home and discover beautiful new places.Exploring the rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales, taking scenic rail journeys and getting to know quaint market towns is an invigorating way to celebrate the end of travel restrictions.During Prima's five-day walking and railway staycation, you can ride the Embassy and Bolton Abbey Railway, embark on a Brontë-themed walk across Yorkshire's wild moors and be treated to more stunning scenery on a Penine Bridleway walk from £549 per person.When? August 2021 (Roshina Jowaheer)
Wuthering Heights InnAs you can guess from the name, this site in Stanbury, Keighley, is in the heart of Brontë Country.You are in the perfect place to explore the area where Charlotte, Emily and Anne lived and were inspired to write their timeless novels, from the unspoiled moors and Dales to the village of Haworth and all the surrounding areas.As the name also suggests, there is a pub right on hand to keep you fed and watered (or beered) with a selection of food and drink.For camping prices start at £15, and it also has two shepherd’s huts for glamping at £55 a night. (David Jagger)
Jo Carruthers (editor), Nour Dakkak (editor), Rebecca Spence (editor)Springer International PublishingISBN 978-3-030-29816-6Anticipatory Materialisms explores nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature thatanticipates and pre-empts the recent philosophical ‘turn’ to materiality and affect. Critical volumes that approach literature via the prism of New Materialism are in the ascendence. This collection stakes a different claim: by engaging with neglected theories of materiality in literary and philosophical works that antedate the twenty-first century ‘turn’ to New Materialism and theories of affect, the project aims to establish a dialogue between recent theoretical considerations of people-world relations in literature and that which has gone before. This project seeks to demonstrate the particular a
nd meaningful ways in which interactions between people and the physical world were being considered in literature between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project does not propose an air of finality; indeed, it is our hope that offering provocative and challenging chapters, which approach the subject from various critical and thematic perspectives, the collection will establish a broader dialogue regarding the ways in philosophy and literature have intersected and informed each other over the course of the long nineteenth century.
The book includes the chapter “The Impatient Anticipations of Our Reason”: Rough Sympathy in Friedrich Schiller and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre by Jo Carruthers.
There are a number of events at St. Mary’s Church including bestselling writer Rowan Coleman who introduces her Brontë mysteries under the pen name of Bella Ellis on Saturday June 12 at 1pm. The series sees the Brontë sisters turn detectives before they become famous authors. (Sue Wilkinson)
1 Jane EyreBecause The Wife Upstairs was inspired by Jane Eyre, now is a good time to re-read this Charlotte Brontë classic. Jane Eyre may have a plain appearance, but she is filled with spirit, wit, and courage despite her upbringing by her cruel aunt, Mrs. Reed. When she becomes the governess to the daughter of the mysterious Mr. Rochester at Thornfield, she secretly falls in love. But when a mysterious fire starts and a man shows up claiming to be the brother of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Jane realises things aren't exactly what they seem. (Sydni Ellis)
Adler by Lavie Tidhard and Paul McCaffreyCan’t get enough of Irene Adler? Think The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be better with women? Try Adler, in which the opera singer-turned-adventuress teams up with other fictional women — Lady Havisham! Jane Eyre! — as well as real historical figures — Marie Curie! Queen Victoria! — to protect the British Empire from an angry African queen and a vampiric assassin. (Eileen Gonzalez)
Her willingness to embrace female nuance and unlikeability makes her part of a new generation of talent buoyed by Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, Michaela Coel’s unjustly Golden Globe ignored I May Destroy You, and Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper’s compelling I Hate Suzie. While books are full of women who frighten and fascinate (Fennell counts the Brontës, Patricia Highsmith and Hilary Mantel among favourites), screen depictions often feel far flatter, she thinks, because physical appearance supercedes attention to detail. “These kind of weird old ladies or pervs or voyeurs” are absent; “We don’t see female losers at all.” (Hannah Betts)
Shirley – who was named after Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous “gallant little cavalier”, a champion of social justice – was born in Chelsea, London, the second child of the political scientist George Catlin and the pacifist author Vera Brittain. The pattern of her life and many of its defining influences owed much to the legacy of their unusual and curious parenting. (Julia Langdon)
Do you know someone with excellent customer service and communication skills who would relish the opportunity to work in a unique heritage setting? We're looking for Visitor Experience Assistants to join our team. Take a look: https://t.co/WQfDaovtbY #Haworth
— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 12, 2021
Alexis EasleyEdinburgh University PressISBN: 9781474475921This book highlights the integral relationship between the rise of the popular woman writer and the expansion and diversification of newspaper, book and periodical print media during a period of unprecedented change, 1832–1860. It includes discussions of canonical women writers such as Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, as well as lesser-known figures such as Eliza Cook and Frances Brown. It also examines the ways in which women readers actively responded to a robust popular print culture by creating scrapbooks and engaging in forms of celebrity worship. At the same time, it demonstrates how Victorian women’s participation in popular print culture anticipates our own engagement with new media in the twenty-first century.
Brontë fans from across the globe are backing a campaign to save fields near their birthplace from the bulldozers, as a housing plan threatens a historic landscape linked to the famous sisters.Academics and Brontë-ites from as far afield as Pennsylvania have objected to Bradford Council's plan for housing in Thornton - where the siblings were born - according to a West Yorkshire writer leading the fight.Michael Stewart, who set up the Brontë Stones walk from Thornton to Haworth, says building on the site will wreck the atmospheric route and could kill off a burgeoning tourist trade.However, a spokesperson for Bradford Council said the plans are not on Green Belt land and officers are scrutinising the blueprints.Dr Stewart, who teaches at the University of Huddersfield, said: "Out of Thornton, the first encounter with a rural landscape is at this site."You are suddenly met with a panoramic view of the valley and you can see the moors in the distance - it's spectacular."The draft Local Plan, which is currently being drawn up by Bradford Council, would see 150 homes built on the Thornton site.That would mean give walkers a view of a housing estate and the backs of homes - instead of panoramic views of the countryside.It could deter some of the hundreds of walkers and Brontë fans who are attracted to the walk - and mean the area would miss out on the money they spend in hotels, restaurants, cafes and other attractions.Dr Stewart estimates that 10,000 people have already walked the Brontë Stones Way since it was set up three years ago.The route passes artwork carved into stone that commemorating all three sisters - from artists and writers including Kate Bush and former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.Dr Stewart is warning that the housing plan could hit the area economically as well as harming the cultural heritage.Another walk called the Brontë Way is rarely walked anymore, he said, because housing development means the first 15 miles of the Oakwall Hall to Burnley route now go through new estates.Building on the Thornton site - known as TH2/H in the draft plan - would kill off the Brontë Stones walk in the same way - and see Bradford district loses the tourist trade which is growing up around Brontë birthplace.A consultation period on site allocated for housing closed last March, but Dr Stewart is still urging people to write to the city council planning department to object. (Victoria Prest)
Biography is a problematical genre. Nearly all human life is there. Supermarkets sell in breathtaking numbers the lives of celebrities, television personalities and sports stars; bookshops heave with volumes about those less trivial, but with less popular appeal – politicians, warriors, philosophers and literary figures. A successful literary biographer needs a command of style and narrative commensurate with that of his or her subject, to retain the reader’s confidence. As a result, a list of the great biographies is dominated by those of great writers – Boswell’s Johnson, Forster’s Dickens, Froude’s Carlyle, Mrs Gaskell’s Charlotte Brontë and, in more recent times, George Painter’s stunning life of Proust or Michael Holroyd’s Shaw. (Simon Heffer)
How to Live. What To Do.Jane Eyre is used, presumably, in the Childhood: Schooling chapter.
In search of ourselves in life and literature
Josh Cohen
Ebury Press
ISBN: 9781785039799
2021
From the truths and lies we tell about ourselves to the resonant creations of fiction, stories give shape and meaning to all our lives. Both a practicing psychoanalyst and a professor of literature, Josh Cohen
has long been taken with the mutual echoes between the life struggles of the consulting room and the dramas of the novel. So what might the most memorable characters in literature tell us about how to live meaningfully?
In How to Live. What to Do, Cohen plots a course through the various stages of our lives, discovering in each the surprising and profound insights literature has to offer. Beginning with the playful mindset of Wonderland's Alice, we discover the resilience of Jane Eyre, the rebellious rage of Baldwin's Johnny Grimes and the catastrophic ambitions of Jay Gatsby, the turbulence of first love for Sally Rooney's Frances, the sorrows of marriage for Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke, and the regrets and comforts of middle age for Rabbit Angstrom.
[Lavie] Tildhar places the action in 1902 London, so a number of characters have to be updated from their 19th century origins to fit the new era. For example, our narrator (and reader POV) is Jane Eyre — but she is no longer the independent-minded governess she was in her eponymous 1847 novel, but instead an even more capable character, a former battlefield medic who served in the Boer War. (Andrew A. Smith)
The first book you remember?It was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, I read it as a girl and it always stayed with me.
She was offered every role going and turned down plenty of prominent parts, including the lead in Elizabeth, which ended up going to Cate Blanchett, and Amélie, which had been specially written for her but eventually was taken by Audrey Tautou. ‘Amélie was at a time in my life when I’d been away a lot; I needed to be at home more, and, anyway, the film was in French, which I don’t speak, and I’d seen Juliette Binoche [speaking English badly] in Wuthering Heights and thought “Hmm, no!”’ (Julia Llewellyn Smith)
On the “Masterpiece” website, “World on Fire” creator Peter Bowker offered this teaser for the second season: “Kasia and Lois will meet, and the fallout from that, I think for everybody, will be interesting and fascinating. Season 2 will start, historically, with the blitz in the Northwest of England. And North Africa will be very much the field of battle. We’ll find out more about Webster’s family history. Nancy will finally have to leave Berlin near the start of the series, for crossing a line, and we will also find out more about Nancy. And she will carry on. She will definitely be in the Soviet Union for some of it. So yeah, that’s the shape it’s taking. And Lois, of course, trapped in a rather Brontë-esque, loveless marriage with Vernon.” (Rich Heldenfels)
Hornsea highlights from its famous pottery to award-winning beach visited by Charlotte Brontë (...)Even the author Charlotte Brontë was among those who visited and one of the highlights of the summer season was the third week in July, when horse racing took place on the beach. (Lucy Oates)
Emma Clayton in The Telegraph & Argus checks out some travel programmes on TV:
Susan Calman’s Grand Days Out also ticked off Yorkshire...Malham Cove and Whitby along with, yep, Brontë Country, where the comic mimed to Wuthering Heights on a wiley, windy moor. Natch.
That song had her in tears. As a new parent she explained she had a bad case of “mum brain” brought on by sleep deprivation. Having not sung in public in more than a year, she also felt “nervous and rusty”. But the self-deprecating patter failed to take the edge off a searing hour that registered somewhere between Tori Amos, Anne Rice and the Brontë sisters. (Ed Power)
Now at the end of the week I still feel reluctant to get out of bed and shower. I haven't read reviews, and I'm just hoping it's not absolutely awful. I try to dismiss thoughts like "Why the hell did you think you could write a book?" and I've stopped wearing the wig, false nose, and fake moustache when I ‘go down the New World' to get more wasabi pea crisps and Whittaker’s white chocolate, but I certainly don't feel like Emily Brontë, Katherine Mansfield or JK Rowling. Though perhaps Emily, Katherine, JK, JRR, AND Michelle Obama also isolated in their rooms eating all manner of weird snacks when their first books came out.
From the myth of the Greek sorceress Circe, who can turn men into swine, and her Indian equivalent Surpanakha, who can turn herself into various forms to lure Laxman into her trap, to the likes of ‘Jane Eyre,’ women have often been portrayed as erratic, violent, and hysteric creatures who stand outside the rational realm of men to attain mysterious, almost mythical proportions.The Arts Desk reviews the film Sequin in a blue room:
At school, Sequin sends texts from under the table while his English teacher invokes Wuthering Heights and rabbits on about obsession, transgression and that remote-seeming word, love. (Matt Wolf)
Quando avevo 17 anni il mio professore di italiano, nell’andare in pensione, mi regalò una copia di Jane Eyre. Pensai che fosse un bel gesto, ma che quel libro non c’entrasse nulla con me, figlia del grunge e della periferia, cosa potevo mai condividere con una delle solite orfane infelici e sfortunate che al massimo potevano realizzarsi con un buon matrimonio, di cui era piena la letteratura? Invece divorai quel libro, con una fame che cresceva a ogni pagina, completamente assorbita da quella ragazza, dalla sua forza, dal suo viaggio senza ritorno verso una meta che era la stessa identica cui tendevo anch’io. La scoperta di se stessi, dell’autenticità e del mistero di ciò che sta sotto le aspettative. Il mio professore sapeva fare il suo lavoro e aveva scelto il libro giusto, conosceva la potenza di quella letteratura che abbiamo incasellato nella definizione di “romanzi di formazione”. (Letizia Giangualano) (Translation)
Victoria Hoyos: Si tuviera que escoger un personaje de ficción de alguna novela para sentarse a charlar un rato, ¿a quién elegiría?Cada libro que uno lee es una conversación en diferido. Ahora estoy releyendo Cumbres borrascosas de Emily Brontë y no sabría con quién quedarme. En todo caso, el espíritu de esta autora está ahí en cada frase, al alcance de mi mano. Ella dice y yo subrayo.(Translation)
Pero si El perro de los Baskerville nos parece la novela más importante de Holmes es por su localización. Doyle prefería los ambientes orientales, y confinó durante muchos relatos a Sherlock en Londres, pero soltar al detective en los tétricos escenarios de las hermanas Brontë fue un acierto extremo, las tierras del norte, sus desoladores páramos trabajan a favor de la trama. (Gonzalo Torné) (Translation)
Acessa (Brazil) lists 'best-selling books' including Wuthering Heights. La Nación (Argentina) mentions the Phil Lord & Chris Miller 1998 Brontë Sisters Power Dolls commercial. Vårt Land (Norway) publishes a quiz which includes a Brontë sisters question. The Well Read List reviews Wuthering Heights.
Mar 30, 2021A remarkable Pocket Poets anthology of poems from around the world and across the centuries about illness and healing, both physical and spiritual.From ancient Greece and Rome up to the present moment, poets have responded with sensitivity and insight to the troubles of the human body and mind. Poems of Healing gathers a treasury of such poems, tracing the many possible journeys of physical and spiritual illness, injury, and recovery, from John Donne’s “Hymne to God My God, In My Sicknesse” and Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul has Bandaged moments” to Eavan Boland’s “Anorexic,” from W.H. Auden’s “Miss Gee” to Lucille Clifton’s “Cancer,” and from D.H. Lawrence’s “The Ship of Death” to Rafael Campo’s “Antidote” and Seamus Heaney’s “Miracle.” Here are poems from around the world, by Sappho, Milton, Baudelaire, Longfellow, Cavafy, and Omar Khayyam; by Stevens, Lowell, and Plath; by Zbigniew Herbert, Louise Bogan, Yehuda Amichai, Mark Strand, and Natalia Toledo. Messages of hope in the midst of pain—in such moving poems as Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” George Herbert’s “The Flower,” Wisława Szymborska’s “The End and the Beginning,” Gwendolyn Brooks’ “when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story” and Stevie Smith’s “Away, Melancholy”—make this the perfect gift to accompany anyone on a journey of healing.
The 19th century clock was part of the evening ritual for the father of Britain’s most famous literary family, as he would stop religiously every evening to wind it up on the stroke of 9pm as he made his way upstairs to bed.And the 6ft tall timepiece, which was made by Barraclough of Haworth, has taken on an added resonance in the museum that is now housed in the former Brontë family home.It has just been returned to the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth after being restored, an annual task that was abandoned last year as the first lockdown was imposed.The clock remained silent throughout the intervening 12 months, but it is now back on the staircase after being cleaned and conserved, its distinctive ticking resonating around the museum.For the Parsonage’s chief curator, Ann Dinsdale, it is a moment that signifies a renewed hope for the future as the museum’s staff and volunteers prepare to re-open to the public next month.She told The Yorkshire Post: “The Parsonage has been eerily quiet for so long now, but to have the clock back and ticking again is wonderful. It really is a big moment for us all, as it is symbolic that the museum is about to re-open to the public again.”The work was carried out by David Barker, a fellow of the British Horological Institute and one of only a handful of accredited clock conservators in Britain.He said: “I have been working on the Parsonage’s clocks for 30 years, and I have enjoyed connecting with them again. It is nice to know that the clock is back where it should be, and working again.”The Parsonage is set to welcome back its first visitors again on May 19, and anyone passing through the entrance will be given unprecedented access to witness some of the 7,000 artefacts which are in the museum’s collection.Visitor numbers will be limited to just six people every 15 minutes, meaning that the venue will be free of the crowds who normally pack into its corridors and rooms. [...]Ms Dinsdale said: “We obviously want people to be able to enjoy the Parsonage safely, so that means people will be able to see the exhibits on show in a manner which is definitely a break from the norm.“It really will be a special time for anyone coming to visit, and we are just so glad to be able to welcome people back once again.”Among the highlights once the museum re-opens will be the exhibition marking the bicentenary of Anne Brontë’s birth, which has been extended into this year after the Parsonage was forced to close in 2020.Among the other artefacts on display will be five of the six “little books” which were written by Charlotte Brontë when she was aged just 14. (Paul Jeeves)
Our team of volunteer gardeners have been hard at work for the past year, coming in when they've been able to do so safely to maintain the Parsonage garden. We think they're absolute stars - here are some pics of the beautiful blooms we're able to enjoy due to their hard work! pic.twitter.com/yuyaj6YlFx
— Brontë Parsonage (@BronteParsonage) April 9, 2021
During my daughter’s early years, one of my greatest escapes was (as it has always been) reading fiction. But the more I read, the more I wondered why the intensity of motherhood, and in particular single motherhood, had not been treated as a worthy literary subject by many writers.James Joyce wrote a book about a guy just walking around Dublin. Why had no one ever done the interior monologue of a woman sitting through a mother’s group? Emily Brontë wrote the compelling tale of Heathcliff’s rage, but why had no writer ever attempted the same for a toddler? Why were there so few books about the minutiae of mothering? (Jacqueline Maley)
“Jane Eyre—she’s a confident, virtuous woman who stands true to her morals and convictions despite the pressures around her and finds love so much greater because of it.”– Christina, Denver, Colorado
I sense deixar Twitter, els hashtag #Sanditon i #SaveSanditon concentren un munt d’aficionats arreu del món de la sèrie de la BBC que es pot veure a Filmin. Com que una temporada es fa curta, i sense concreció d’una segona, els fans tornen a veure els capítols i els comenten en temps real de vegades fins i tot comentant la novel·la en què està inspirada la sèrie, ‘Sanditon’ de Jane Eyre. L’obra inacabada de la mítica novel·lista, que ha publicat Alba, té un inesperat i àvid focus d’atenció. (Carol Álvarez) (Translation)
Horror in the Age of Steam
Tales of Terror in the Victorian Age of Transitions
By Carroll Clayton SavantRoutledgeISBN 9780367858582March 2021Change is terrifying, and rapid change, within a small amount of time, is destabilizing to any culture. England, under the tutelage of Queen Victoria, witnessed precipitous change the likes of which it had not encountered in generations. Wholesale swaths of the economy and the social structure underwent complete recalibration, through the hands of economic progress, industrial innovation, scientific discovery, and social cohesiveness. Faced with such change, Britons had to redefine the concept of work, belief, and even what it meant to be English. Victorians relied on many methods to attempt to release the steam from the anxieties incurred through change, and one of those methods was the horror story of everyday existence during an age of transition. This book is a study of how authors Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë turned to horrifying representations of everyday reality to illustrate the psychological-traumatic terrors of an age of transition.
Chapter Three: Greeks, Freaks, and Raving Lunatics: The Monstrous World of Science in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering HeightsChapter Four: Hysterical Angels and Loud-Mouthed Hussies: Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and the Transformation of Gendered Voices in Victorian England
Now Haworth, Cross Roads and Stanbury Parish Council have submitted an application to install a new notice board, which will hold a map of key attractions in the village, at the bottom of Main Street.The Council's application says it could be the first in a number of tourist maps installed at key sites in Haworth. [...]The Parish Council's application says: "As a result of the closure of the Tourist Information Centre there has been a concern that visitors required information located at specific locations in the form of a map to identify places of interest."The Parish Council believes this village map board will have positive benefits in promoting tourism in the area."Hopefully this will be the first map board to be placed at strategic locations across the village."If the application is approved, the first sign will be installed near an existing heritage sign outside the Old Hall Hotel.A decision on the application is expected next month. (Chris Young)
one of the few prequels that has lived up to the genius of the book that inspired it. (Jane Sullivan)
The Eyre Affair by Jasper FfordeIn an alternate Great Britain, futuristic technologies like cloning and time travel are everyday commodities. When the conniving Acheron Hades seeks to erase Jane Eyre (yes, the Jane Eyre) from history, detective Thursday Next is assigned to the case. As she dodges time-space-sucking black holes and reckons with all sorts of anachronistic nightmares, Thursday is the literary world’s only hope of bringing justice to Jane Eyre and Charlotte Brontë’s poor manuscript. (CJ Connor)
He also has an Englishman’s innate understanding that things will invariably go wrong. In 1970 Fairport played the Yorkshire Folk, Jazz and Blues Festival, an attempt at a British Woodstock that ended up as a hippy Wuthering Heights, with howling gales and its forlorn promoter going mad and spending two weeks wandering the Yorkshire moors. (Will Hodgkinson)
The debut director and co-writer Samuel van Grinsven displays a deft comedic touch with the classroom scenes (teacher droning on about Heathcliff and Victorian romance while Sequin sexts potential conquests) and with Sequin’s awkward exchanges with his blokey, matey father (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor). (Kevin Maher)
To celebrate the 251st Birth Anniversary of William Wordsworth and the 201st Birth Anniversary of Anne Brontë, a special talk by Dr. R. Purnima, Director of Children’s Literary Club, and formerly Professor of English, KSOU, is organised at 5.30 pm on Apr. 9. This event will be held at Chamundi Children’s Home, II Stage Brindavan Extension, Mysuru. For details contact Mob: 96323-15924.
